Mind Body Kung Fu

In my experience with learning and teaching I-Liq Chuan, I have noticed that a lot of time is spent training the point of contact.  Once the basic understanding of body unification is achieved, training can quickly progress to framing movements in terms of the point of contact.  The point of contact provides a context for movements and serves as a training aid which guides the training progression.

Spinning to flow seems like such a simplistic exercise.  Start on the lower hand position, spin until you land on the upper hand position, and then wait for your partner to do the same thing.  One partner moves, while the other partner listens and flows.  It is so easy that the exercise bored me when I first learned it.  Of course, things always look deceptively simple in the beginning.  The more I learned, the more I began to appreciate the utility of starting with the simpler movements of the first spinning hands drill.  There is more to the drill than just spinning on top.

Web explorations to expand your mind and give you an excuse to slack off for a bit:

Why would someone dedicate so much time and energy into a martial art?  If you believe in the 10,000 hour theory, proficiency can take a long time to achieve.  After all that time spend training, what do you have?  The physical skills achieved from martial arts training are not always relevant to modern life.  The rewards for all the training time and effort seem incommensurate.  There must be some other underlying reason to continue training.